The party co-chairmen Baroness Warsi and Andrew Feldman have this week announced the new membership of the Board's Committee on Candidates.

Here's how they explained the changes in a message to senior party members:

A number of you have asked about our plans for organising the selection of candidates. As you know, the Boundary Commission will not complete its report and put in place new constituency boundaries until 2012 or 2013. That means that constituency Associations are unlikely to be able to hold any selections until 2012 or until those boundaries become clear.

In order to steer the Party through this unusual period, we have re-organised the Board’s Candidate Committee. It will be co-chaired by Baroness Browning and Carolyn Chisholm – a senior Party volunteer. The Committee will be responsible for setting the policies around selection, lists, PABs, and other candidate-related issues between now and the end of the Boundary Review. The full membership of the Candidates Committee is as follows:

Baroness Browning (Co-Chairman, pictured)

Carlyn Chisholm (Co-Chairman)

Baroness Warsi

Andrew Feldman

Patrick McLoughlin MP

Graham Brady MP (John Whittingdale MP to attend in his absence)

Jeremy Middleton

Paul Swaddle

Rob Semple

Stephen Gilbert

Timothy Kirkhope MEP will be invited to attend when matters which might affect selections to the European Parliament will be on the agenda. There will also be a sub-committee whose task it is to consider the implications of the Boundary Review and how they impact selections of candidates from 2012. This sub-committee will comprise John Whittingdale MP, Jeremy Middleton, Stephen Gilbert and Roger Pratt.

I have written a piece for today's Observer about the frustration that Conservatives feel about having UKIP stand against us, given the well-established argument that supporting them risks letting those in Labour and the Lib Dems with a track record of supporting euro-federalism remain in Parliament over Conservatives seeking the opposite direction of travel.

With 557 candidates, UKIP is fielding ten more candidates than the Referendum Party did in 1997, a new record for a minority party at a general election.

But I have also looked at those seats where UKIP is not putting up a candidate. I'm not sure it has been noted anywhere else, but I was astounded that for all their carping about the Tory failure to adopt a sufficiently robust European policy, they have failed to nominate a candidate against William Hague, the man who would lead negotiations with Europe for a Cameron Government. George Osborne's Tatton seat is similarly left uncontested by UKIP (Click here for the Press Association's full list of candidates standing for all parties in every constituency).

With nominations for the 650 constituencies now closed, it has been confirmed that a record 4,149 candidates are standing at this general election - equivalent to 6.4 candidates per seat across the UK.

1987 was probably the last time when the average constituency in England saw a three-way fight (alongside (four-way contests in Scotland and Wales).

In 1992 we then saw the emergence of hundreds of extra candidates from the Green Party and the Natural Law Party, whilst 1997 then saw the intervention of the Referendum Party, which stood in the vast majority of seats.

The total dipped in 2001, but has since continued to rise, arriving at that figure of 4,149 for this year's general election.

According to the Press Association, four minor parties are fighting more than 100 constituencies, which are:

UKIP - 557

BNP - 337

Green - 334

English Democrats - 106

There are more than 100 other minor parties putting up candidates, with more than 300 individuals standing as Independents as well.

All of these will add confusion to the electoral mix, doubtless with the frontrunners in each seat pushing the message that "X can't win here" and that "voting Y will let in Z".

Furthermore, I suspect a preponderance of "others" will further reduce the overall national percentage voteshare that either the Conservatives or Labour would need to attain in order to win a majority nationally.

By way of comparison, here are the total numbers of candidates who have stood at the last few general elections (according to the Times Guide ot the House of Commons) :

The ragbag of candidates have no platform in common apart from having signed up to the "Bell principles", drawn up by ex-Independent MP Martin Bell, which amount to little more than agreeing to be "free from the control of any political party", yet also committing to "work with other elected independents as a group with a chosen spokesperson" - which sounds to me like the makings of a political party, but there you go.

Some of these Independent candidates are former representatives of existing political parties: for example, the ex-Labour MP Tony Clarke is standing in his old seat of Northampton South (which should helpfully split the Left wing vote in the seat being defended by Conservative MP Brian Binley), whilst John Stevens, who is challenging John Bercow in Buckingham, is an ultra-europhile former Tory MEP who set up the Pro-Euro Conservative Party before joining the Liberal Democrats.

So the notion that these Independents are in some way all non-political moderates is patent nonsense. Quite how they can all form a cohesive block is beyond me, given that there is no political world view that unites them. And that is where any perceived merit in backing these Independents falls down.

Whilst we will all be electing someone to representative in Parliament at the general election, we are also looking to play our part in choosing the government of the country. And voting for any of these Independents wlll by definition remove the opportunity to influence whether the general election delivers five more years of Labour Government or a new Conservative administration.

> Today's Guardian has a feature on Independent candidates at this general election

As MPs returning to Westminster tomorrow open their letters from Sir Thomas Legg with a verdict on their expenses claims of the last five years, there will be renewed speculation as to whether a further tranche of MPs will now opt to stand down at the next general election.

I therefore thought this an opportune moment to take stock of where things stand at the moment in terms of Conservative MPs who will not be seeking re-election.

As of today, the following 17 MPs elected as Conservatives (most of whom are retiring, but several of whom may seek re-election under a different banner) have already had new Conservative PPCs selected in their place:

Additionally, there is Ryedale MP John Greenway who has been left seatless, having lost out in the race with Anne McIntosh for the newly drawn Thirsk and Malton constituency; and John Bercow who will contest Buckingham as "Speaker seeking re-election", but not opposed by the Conservatives. Then, aside from the two Conservative MPs who held previously Tory seats at by-elections, there are the two MPs who gained seats at by-elections, Edward Timpson and Chloe Smith.

This all means that currently we can only expect 167 existing Conservative MPs to be seeking re-election, with more of those expected to call it a day and make way for someone else before the general election.

We recently featured a piece by Hamish Fulton, who explained why he answered David Cameron's call for new candidates to come forward. Here Bob Greig, a single father who has always voted Labour, explains why he responded to David Cameron's call and is seeking selection for a constituency after being accepted onto the approved candidates' list.

When preparing my application form to become a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate earlier this year I spent a lot of time hesitating!

Urging me on was David Cameron’s request for new people to put themselves forward. That request hit me with force. It was simple really. I knew I could offer the Party some valuable insights on welfare and benefit reform and do the day to day work of an MP. I also knew I had the heart and the intellect to really fulfill the role.

But things putting me off were the very simple facts that to date I had never voted Conservative, I was not a member of the Party, and my CV was very different to the PPCs I was reading about on the Conservative web site. In place of “short stint with the Guards before pursuing a successful career in the City”, it read “single parent, redundancy, and a short stint on incapacity benefit”. Not exactly traditional Tory stuff!

My application forms were on hold for now.

I’ve been a single parent now for six years. In that period I have had to change jobs, I have been made redundant, moved house three times, spent thousands of hours nurturing my youngest girl who for the first couple of years seemed a bit lost, and many more dealing with my eldest child who has acute emotional difficulties. I have spent all my limited savings trying to keep the show on the road, and in the middle of this I developed a severe anxiety/panic disorder which kept me away from full-time work for the best part of 18 months. With that embarrassing condition (which too few sufferers can still talk about) I lost self confidence, stopped socialising, and basically stopped living.

This was made harder because I come from what used to be called “solid working class stock”. From being the first family member to get to University to being the first to receive government welfare is a hard, life-changing, journey to make.

And life-changing it was. For out of these experiences I set about trying to improve the lot of others who find themselves in similar positions.

Today, the Sunday Times reports that 70 names have recently been added to the candidates' list (considerably lower than the 4,000 who initially expressed an interest) and identifies the following five:

Nini Adetuberu (pictured) - A 29-year-old Nigerian-born woman who works with drug
addicts in north London;

Merryn Myatt - A 55-year-old businesswoman who use to present the BBC
consumer show, The Really Useful Show, and regional news in North West England;

Colonel Bob Stewart - The 60-year-old former soldier and friend of Martin Bell who served in Northern Ireland and the Balkans and was awarded the Distinguished
Service Order for gallantry in Bosnia;

Rory Stewart - a 36-year old former officer in the Black Watch (and one-time Labour supporter) who set up the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a charity dedicated to
restoring Afghanistan’s traditional craft skills;

Charlotte Vere - A 40-year-old who gave up a well paid career as a finance director to run Big White
Wall, a charity
helping people with mental health problems.

They will doubtless appear among the many who applied for the first tranche of safe seats to come up post-Expensesgate and will also be vying for the nomination in the latest retirement seat to emerge: Suffolk Central and Ipswich North, which Sir Michael Lord announced yesterday he will be vacating at the general election.

One relative newcomer to politics who has already been selected to fight a Conservative seat is of course Sarah Wollaston, the GP chosen to fight Totnes at an Open Primary.

Hamish Fulton has recently been accepted on to the approved candidates' list. He has no political experience and only applied to be a candidate after the list was re-opened in late May. A lifelong Conservative voter, here he explains why, after careers in the Army and in business, he now wants the chance to have a third career in Parliament.

David Cameron’s call for new candidates in the early summer, following the so-called MPs' expenses scandal, didn’t fall on deaf ears here. Or it turns out with thousands of other would-be parliamentarians. In my case though, it had less to do with the furore surrounding the now famous duck houses and moats, and more because it struck a chord, deep down, that I’d not connected with for a long time.

Once I was a young Army Officer freshly out of Sandhurst, aged 19. Eleven mostly older and much more experienced NCOs and soldiers were now my sole responsibility, at least in military matters; and all of them looked to me for a semblance of leadership and direction. As it turned out, I made many mistakes and wrong turns but in the end things clicked. Serving one’s fellow human beings, especially in a very public service such as the Army, resonated deeply with me. Not only was I acutely aware that they relied on me for leadership and direction, but also that my actions and decisions could, ultimately, affect their very lives.

Later in business, in London and running my own company, I find the same things apply. Making a profit is one thing, but leading and managing and empowering employees is just as crucial to overall success. So too, as Chairman of Trustees of a local school, you learn very quickly that serving the interests of parents, children and their teachers requires all your wits, and a pragmatic approach to problems, as well as leading on strategic issues: the financing and construction of new buildings and facilities for example. Never mind the fundraising!

So, you arrive at 50 plus, divorced and with two teenage children, and you think: I don’t do anything for anyone any more. Well, not outside my own immediate family and friends. And even then it's mostly just for myself, because my kids have almost flown from the nest anyway. It’s just me me me, and that’s just not good enough. Not at all.

Encouragement of Conservative candidates to become 'community champions' within their constituencies will be a key theme of this year's Candidates' Conference, organised by David Senior and Mary Macleod of the Candidates' Association. Philippa Stroud of the Centre for Social Justice and our candidate in Sutton and Cheam, will address candidates about the benefits of becoming supportive of local charities and voluntary groups.

Party Chairman Caroline Spelman plus Shireen Ritchie and John Maples MP of the Candidates Department will also be speaking.

Attendees will have the option of attending two of six workshops. Themes include 'funding your campaign', 'handling the media' and 'preparing a CV' for candidates who have not yet been adopted. The workshops and other details of the Conference are summarised in this PDF.

I have repeatedly asked CCHQ what will happen to those non-battleground seats that have been frustrated in their ambitions to pick 'em early and pick 'em local... I have asked if candidates will be imposed... The unwillingness to reply leads me to believe that imposition of candidates will happen (and given the time-scale will probably be necessary).

There are some battleground seats that still do have to select, however. Three stand out to me:

Rochester and Strood which is notionally Conservative through boundary changes

Westmorland and Lonsdale which Tim Collins lost at the last election by a small margin

North East Cambs - a safe Tory seat from which Malcolm Moss is retiring

Scotland has been much slower than Wales (where ten new candidates have been chosen) to select but will - within a fortnight - have selected for its target seats, including Edinburgh South and Perth & North Perthshire.

The problem for Scottish Conservatives is that all but two candidates are not bedded down.

There are a few other interesting selection issues posed by an early election:

Andrew Pelling. This seat could easily be lost - Neil Hamilton-style - if recent allegations of assault dog Pelling's campaign. The allegations hanging over him could hurt other London candidates. Boundary changes mean he faces a small Labour majority.

What will Boris Johnson do? If he stands again for Henley he'll communicate a lack of interest in the London job.

Ann Widdecombe's retirement announcement was expected imminently. What will she do now? She'll probably have to stand again.

Overall assessment: "With a few important exceptions, the party has candidates in most battleground seats. Some have only been selected recently, however, and will be disadvantaged by not having had the chance to build local reputations or knowledge. Activists in non-battleground seats fear that they won't have any choice of candidates but will have A-listers imposed upon them."

"Have you undertaken a really successful campaign? Maybe you have
prevented the closure of your local post office; or you achieved
amazing results in the local elections?"

Social Action Award

"Every project, be it career-mentoring for under-privileged young
people, promoting healthy eating among children, internet lessons for
the elderly, or e-books to prepare students for life at university,
adds enormous value to the local community and makes a real difference
to people's lives."The Membership and Affiliations Award

"We want to hear from you if you have reached out to a hitherto untapped
section of the electorate; have run a successful membership drive;
organised a series of discussion forums for a wider and new audience;
or have recruited lots of extra volunteers to help with canvassing and
leaflet drops."

Best "Communication Champion"

"The Communication Champions are playing a vital role in bringing us
closer together. Working on the ground, the
Communication Champions communicate and distribute messages and
feedback throughout the country."

Click here for more info, the deadline for applications is in December. The prize ceremony will be in January but the prizes haven't been decided yet. Last year members in Bassetlaw went to America to visit the Republican Party as a reward for their success in campaigning.

Kent Conservatives are holding rallies in
various towns across the county on September 22nd, asking Gordon Brown for the promised referendum. Former regional press officer Janice Small and South East MEP Dan
Hannan have organised the events. Janice explains here why she thinks all
candidates, MPs, MEPs and activists around the UK should do the same.

At last we have returned to the nasty EU question that we haven’t been
able to discuss for two years but now David Cameron is taking the lead
on Europe, in common with public opinion and as our most Eurosceptic
leader. Let’s keep up the pressure on Labour and the issue alive in
the media by running a nationwide campaign to keep Gordon Brown’s
promise for a referendum on the Treaty and to kick UKIP into the long
grass.

We have organised street stalls and rallies where we will give
speeches and ask people to sign a petition and direct them to the Daily
Telegraph’s online petition.

People are interested in this issue but it needs to be made easy for
them to get involved. On his blog, Dan Hannan recently complained that
people are not signing the Telegraph’s EU Treaty referendum petition.
But why is he surprised?

An analysis by ConservativeHome of those adopted as Tory candidates for the next General Election says that there would likely be fifty to sixty women Tory MPs if the Conservative Party formed a majority after the next General Election.

There are currently just 17 Conservative female MPs.

Although the Tory leadership has failed to deliver their ideal aim of half of Tory candidates being women there has been significant progress with women doing relatively better in the most winnable seats.

Although, for example, only 31% of all adopted candidates are women, 46% of the candidates (11) adopted for the 24 seats with notional Tory majorities are women.

The ratio deteriorates thereafter. 35% of candidates selected for the top twenty target seats are women but just 28% for the top 75 target seats.

Women most likely to be Tory MPs after the next General Election include Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands), Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire), Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) and Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North).

On current selections, half a dozen candidates from ethnic minorities are likely to enter Parliament as Tories - joining Adam Afriyie and Shailesh Vara.

Priti Patel (Witham) and Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) are the two "BME" candidates in the group of notionally Conservative seats. Three BMEs have so far been selected for the top 75 seats: Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones (Chippenham), Zahid Iqbal (Bradford West) and Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton SW). Six BMEs so far selected for top 150 seats: including Alok Sharma (Reading West), Mark Clarke (Tooting) and Shaun Bailey (Hammersmith). The party also has hopes that Tony Lit may join the green benches as the unlikely new Tory MP for Ealing Southall after next Thursday.

ConservativeHome Comment: "Although David Cameron's A-list alienated many Conservative activists it has undoubtedly contributed to a significant increase in the number of women who would sit as MPs on the benches of a Tory government. Many come from conventional Conservative backgrounds, however. Most of the women selected appear to come from the law or the City. Few have public or voluntary sector backgrounds. The party has also yet to address the issues of financial exclusion. The £41,000 average cost of becoming a Tory MP at the last General Election may deter excellent candidates with modest backgrounds from becoming an MP."

It includes lists of constituency selections, broken down into
graphs and tables showing the proportion of A-listers and women being
selected so far, and now a table listing seats and their candidates in target order. Please feel free to send him any corrections and additions.

I'm sure many of you will find it useful, and will be
thankful for the time Rory has put into this. We will publish a detailed analysis later of how winnable seats being fought by female candidates are compared to those of male candidates.

The Privy Council confirmed the new Parliamentary boundaries last night, with effect from a week on Wednesday.

This basically means that candidates in constituencies with new boundaries can be assured that the next General Election will without question be fought on those new boundaries, although by-elections until that time will be on the old boundaries.

I was selected for Corby &
East Northamptonshire by open primary in October last year, and got
to work at once. With my area campaign director and regional director
(Simon Eardley and David Surtees, both of whom know the seat and its
politics inside out) we conducted an audit. It was a bit daunting, as
a new candidate, to be summoned to Francis Maude’s office to give
him an overview of the seat. I’m afraid I spent my thirty minutes
barraging him with an endless list of requests. To his credit, he was
undaunted. Including at the moment I idly picked up his Blackberry and
looked at the front of the screen, thinking “What? I don’t have
an appointment with Theresa May at three!” (Mine was a new phone and
looked identical. Sorry Francis).

"You're right in saying my ambition is for our Party to be representative of modern Britain. We cannot be so without ensuring that our candidates include men and women not just from the public and voluntary sectors but from all over Britain. And while we have made progress, there is much to do - not just for Parliamentary candidates but in choosing council candidates and increasing our membership and supporter base.

I've spoke to Francis about your three suggestions to help attract a wider range of candidates.

First, he has agreed that the fee for the Parliamentary Assessment Board, where there are compelling cases, can be reduced on a case by case basis. In fact this is something that has happened in the past.

Second, we'll give some serious thought to your emergency access fund. I like the idea. If possible we should do it. I'm not promising anything immediate, but I'll see what we can do.

Third, instead of a ‘Candidate's Protector', which seems a little bureaucratic, we already have in place ‘MP Mentors' who guide and counsel candidates. I'll make sure John Maples gets Mentors to monitor financial demands placed on candidates.

Campaign Directors are in place working on Target Seats. They are the best placed people to advise candidates and associations on how time and money should be prioritised."

I'm not convinced that aspiring candidates would feel inclined to ask for or accept individual subsidies for their PABs, but David's answer shows that the issue is at least being thought about. ConservativeHome will be following these points up with Francis Maude.

Andrew Grice has a good scoop about selection procedures in today's Independent, if not a very good understanding of the current system.

It looks like everybody on the candidates list, not just the priority list, will soon be able to apply for any seat - and be able to try and prove their local credentials. This addresses an issue often raised here that although Associations can recommend non-priority local candidates that they know, candidates themselves are kept out of the loop on selections in seats that they may have strong local connections with.

Unfortunately this sensible amendment is accompanied by a more controversial proposal: to make it mandatory for final shortlists to include two men and two women. This would close the so-called "loophole" of Associations being able to choose all-male shortlists for open primaries.

It's not clear at this stage how rigid this would be. What if two female candidates can't be found? What if the Association wanted to shortlist three females - would the Association still have to shortlist two men? The Party Board will have to approve these changes next week but it's unlikely that the representatives of the voluntary Party will knock it back.

50% women shortlists aren't as disagreeable as all-women shortlists, but many of the arguments against the latter such as "the Widdecombe critique", are still applicable.

Deputy Editor

Lunchtime update from the Press Association:

"Deputy party chairman John Maples, who is responsible for candidates, said: "The Priority List (A-list) has helped us to make significant progress, and so far nearly 40% of selected candidates are women, but we can still do better. The new option toughens up the rules on women and allows more candidates to apply for seats in their region."

The proposal is likely to be seen as a defeat for the 'A-list' system, intended by Mr Cameron to ensure more women and ethnic priority candidates were selected for winnable seats. It has proved highly controversial among local constituencies that deeply resented having candidates imposed on them from party headquarters in London."

It includes lists of constituency selections, broken down into graphs and tables showing the proportion of A-listers and women being selected so far. I'm sure many of you will find it useful, and will be thankful for the time Rory has put into this.

We hope to be able to publish updated versions in the near future. Please feel free to send him any corrections and additions in the meantime.

Since the results of December's survey were published, there has been some debate about how to select candidates for the next EU elections over on ToryDiary and YourPlatform.

Jonathan Evans MEP has a different take on it all:

"I am rather surprised that your survey did not also invite opinions among
your correspondents on whether sitting Conservative MPs should also undertake a
process of full reselection involving a vote of all Party members in their
parliamentary constituencies.

All Party members have been able
to participate in the reselection process of the current team of
Conservative MEPs on two occasions in the past seven years, but the vast
majority of Party members in Conservative constituencies have either never had a
say in the choice of their Conservative MP or no say in the last 20 years.

Having received over 96% of the votes of Welsh Conservative Party members
participating in the European selection process in 1999 and 2004, I am perfectly
prepared to go through whatever selection process the Board of the Party should
decide, but I certainly favour consistency in the selection processes between
MEPs and MPs."

The idea that MPs should face "proper" reselection contests every four or five years has been mooted a couple of times by ConservativeHome commenters. It's been suggested that new MPs should be reselected automatically (within reason) for their first General Election as the incumbent, but have some sort of contest for each election after that.

There are some clear advantages to this system, such as keeping MPs on their toes (especially so-called "bed-blockers") and ensuring that they have the support of Party activists.

It would certainly cause complications in the short-term, but I think it is worth debating how it could work...

I'm grateful to those candidates who attended yesterday's conference and provided me with feedback. Here are some of the observations I received...

Two hundred or so A-list and other approved candidates attended.

Grant Shapps MP gave an excellent presentation on e-campaigning and on the benefits of contacting 7,000 voters a week and to do so with next to no funds!

Rishi Saha of CCHQ gave a highly practical presentation on how to get a social action project off the ground and demonstrate 'compassionate credentials'.

Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth admitted that nuclear power was an option even if it wasn't FotE's favoured option.

John Maples’ suggestion that CVs might need a bit of polishing if candidates weren't getting interviews went down like a lead baloon with the 75% of non-A-listers in the room who hadn’t even had the chance to submit a CV.

John Maples and Shireen Ritchie appeared ignorant of “local” candidates being vetoed by Candidates’ Team/CCHQ after being invited to apply by local Chairmen.

Mary Macleod struggled to put a positive gloss on finding it impossible to get a shadow cabinet minister to go north of Watford – no, sorry, north of Westminster – to do a policy briefing for candidates in the north.

One of the questions for John Maples was - "Why do we (non-A list candidates) have to find out about upcoming seats from Conservative Home and not from you?" This reportedly generated a good deal of applause and provoked Mr Maples to say he would "consider it". Shireen Ritchie's said that she had initially seen ConservativeHome as a threat and an irritation but now was able to "live with it". Maples also said he had to "sometimes" read this to find out what was going on.

There was also a lot of gratitude to David Senior and Mary Macleod of the Candidates' Association for organising the event.